FFRF freethinking banner in N.Y. park counters religion

December 12, 2018

A New York freethinking organization has once again unfurled a Freedom From Religion Foundation banner at a local park to balance religion there.

The Freethinkers of Hastings-on-Hudson recently put up FFRF’s “Reason’s Greetings” banner in VFW Park in the New York village. Next to it, the group has also displayed its own sign depicting Rodin’s “The Thinker” in contemplation of the village’s water tower. A Festivus pole, invented and made famous by the TV show “Seinfeld,” is also in the park between the two displays.

It is the fifth year in a row the local organization has created a public exhibition for the winter.

The secular displays have been crafted in response to two religious holiday presentations traditionally hosted in the park, a Catholic Church’s nativity scene and a menorah put up by the local Chabad group. The electrically lighted menorah is up again this year and indeed stands adjacent to the freethinking exhibits.

“Until and unless government spaces stop allowing religious displays, we’ll be there, too,” says FFRF Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor. “There has to be ‘room at the inn’ for freethinking points of view.”

The Freedom From Religion Foundation, a state/church watchdog, has 32,000 members all over the country, including more than 1,500 in New York. Its purposes are to protect the constitutional principle of separation between state and church, and to educate the public on matters relating to nontheism.

The Freedom From Religion Foundation, based in Madison, Wis., a 501(c)(3) nonprofit educational charity, is the nation's largest association of freethinkers (atheists, agnostics), and has been working since 1978 to keep religion and government separate.